Progenitor - Michael Jan Friedman [79]
“Coward!” he rasped. “Pile of dung!”
Simenon didn’t let the taunts get to him. If anything, they gave him the courage to keep going, to endure the agony in his side—because if Kasaelek was resorting to curses, he had to be faltering.
“I’ll rip you apart!” the Aklaash railed at him. “I’ll tear out your entrails and feed them to the sanjarra!”
The engineer barely heard what he was saying. He was too busy biting back his pain. But he wouldn’t let go.
And Kasaelek, who hadn’t shown any signs of fatigue when the combat started, began to show them with increasing rapidity. His breath came harder and harder. He staggered and flailed with arms that looked as if they had weights attached to them. And his fiery insults turned into a long, formless snarl of anger and frustration.
Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. His gigantic frame began to sag. And wracked by exhaustion, he crashed to his knees.
It was exactly the opening Simenon had been waiting for. Thrusting aside his own red storm of pain, he scrambled for a rock at the edge of the clearing.
It wasn’t more than a couple of meters away, but it might as well have been a light-year. If the engineer didn’t grab it and put it to good use before Kasaelek got to his feet, all the torment he had endured would go for nothing.
As the Aklaash drew in a deep, shuddering breath, Simenon’s fingers closed on the rock. Then he changed direction and launched himself at his bigger, stronger adversary.
By then, Kasaelek had planted his right foot on the ground and was preparing to get up. But he hadn’t cast a glance in Simenon’s direction. At least, not yet.
Calling on his ancestors for strength, the engineer lifted the rock and cracked Kasaelek over the head with it. The Aklaash slumped and grabbed the ground, but didn’t fall. Simenon smashed him in the skull a second time, forcing the knee Kasaelek had raised to crumble, but the giant was still fending off unconsciousness.
One last time, Simenon thought.
Clinging to that promise, he raised the rock as high as he could and brought it down on the Aklaash’s cranium. And to his relief, it knocked Kasaelek flat, stripping the Aklaash of what little sense still rattled about in his head.
I’ve won, the engineer told himself.
But it didn’t sink in until he looked around and saw his comrades cheering for him at the top of their lungs. Even the captain, who usually kept his emotions to himself. Even Greyhorse, for the gods’ sake. They were shaking their fists and roaring with triumph as if it were they who had toppled Kasaelek.
I’ve won, Simenon repeated. And he had—not only for himself but for his father and his brothers, who would have been celebrating his victory now if they had lived long enough to join him in the ritual.
Someone put a hand on Simenon’s shoulder. Looking up, he saw that it was the Elder who had called for the combat.
“Rise,” he said.
Simenon heaved the rock away, shuddering at the pain it cost him. Then, ever so slowly and carefully, he stood.
He noticed that the Fejjimaera had entered the clearing. They were standing at its edges, looking downcast at their defeat. Especially Banyohla, who seemed to be injured and was leaning on one of his comrades for support.
Simenon almost felt sorry for Banyohla. Almost.
“You have won the running of the ritual as prescribed by law,” the Elder told him. “You have triumphed over your rivals.”
The engineer liked the sound of that.
“All you need do now,” said the Elder, “is produce the insadja’tu and complete the ceremony. Then the nest is yours.”
The insadja’tu, Simenon thought, his mind numb and distant in the aftermath of his struggle. It was the stone his father had made for him when he was young, an exact replica of the one the Elder Simenon had carried in his own ritual victory.
The engineer knew what he had to do. He had to present the insadja’tu to the Elder and finish what he had started. With that in mind, he fished in the interior pocket of his garment—a deep, narrow slot into which he had inserted the stone before he left the Stargazer.
How proud his father